Indexable turret assemblies have found wide-spread use in the machine tooling industry. Such assemblies are capable of selectively positioning a plurality of diverse tools into proper alignment with a workpiece so as to allow sequential machining operations to be performed thereon.
The most common types of indexable turret assemblies are those which support tools suitable for turning operations wherein the tools are stationary with respect to a revolving workpiece or those which support tools suitable for milling, drilling, tapping, etc. wherein the tools are rotatably driven with respect to a non-rotating workpiece.
There have more recently been developed machine tools having indexable turret assemblies capable of supporting combinations of live as well as stationary tools. Such turret assemblies serve to increase the overall flexibility of the machine tool by allowing greater diversity in the machining operations.
One such machine tool is disclosed by Kolblin in U.S. Pat. No. 4,429,443. Kolblin teaches the use of an indexable turret assembly for supporting stationary as well as live tooling including a live tooling engagement device movable between a decoupled position and a coupled position by means of a piston in cylinder arrangement.
One shortcoming associated with the apparatus of Kolblin is that the live tooling drive units are separate from the indexing drive units thus adding to the overall complexity of the turret assembly.